


A True History of True Sight

by SecondStarfall (beantiger)



Series: The Second Starfall Stories [7]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Ableism, Books, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Fantasy, Flash Fic, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Heirs, Kings & Queens, Loss, Medieval, Microfic, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary parent, Originally Posted Elsewhere, Parent Death, Parents, Princes & Princesses, Psychic Abilities, Royalty, Trust Issues, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22097629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall
Summary: When the crown princess was born, she was born with both eyes open—one violet, as was expected from someone of her bloodline, and one a stony grey...***A king and his consort seek to cure their daughter of her disabling magic, even if it means changing her irrevocably.
Series: The Second Starfall Stories [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582975
Kudos: 13





	A True History of True Sight

**Author's Note:**

> This is a version of the original Twitterfic, same title, posted over at my now-deactivated personal account in December 2019. It has been given minor edits for consistency with other stories and readability on AO3. ❤️ 
> 
> **SUGGESTED RE-READING:** This stands alone, I think, but you can meet the queen in ["A Good Queen Is Good To Have."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22005889)
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨

When the crown princess was born, she was born with both eyes open—one violet, as was expected from someone of her bloodline, and one a stony grey. And as her hair grew in, it grew in halves: black on the violet-eyed side, transparent and silvery on the other, like the guard hairs of some elderly beast.

The king's consort said, "It must have been the accident. I hit my head, you bruised your eye, and so..." 

(Such was medical logic in those days: the royal pair had fallen out of a carriage before conceiving the princess, and somehow gained transmissible injuries.)

Still, they loved their child as few other parents did, common or noble. Especially as she was a peculiar babe. 

The king, whom she called Father, appreciated her intuition. She always, for instance, knew which grown-up courtiers wanted to charm her for political benefit. She easily uncovered guards that were not to be trusted, for their loyalties lie with their own noble houses over the crown. Often she brought home wild animals that tamed well, and magnificently skilled peasants, too. She was charismatic and confident, though sometimes wracked by violent headaches that left her bedridden.

Still, she was adventurous. Too adventurous, depending on who you asked. 

"She has no sense!" said the king's consort, called Papa (for, though they carried and fed the infant princess, they were neither man nor woman). "The accident knocked it out of her, and the color from her features."

"She merely knows our people well," said the king. "The ritualists down in the shrine say she is _perfect,_ darling, she is fine."

On this the king stood firm, until the princess grew to be a decade old and it was time to begin searching out a consort for her, to plan for marriage when she turned eighteen. Her reputation had spread far, however, like a plague: this witchy, lucky princess, half-ghost.

No one would come calling. No one had come calling.

The kingdom's armies had gone to war almost every year for centuries, and so the king had no siblings, no cousins, no other heirs. Most of his family had perished in blood and cacophony, their bones moldering in foreign lands.

He thought about this for a long time. His consort comforted him, discussed an idea. 

With great pain, and through the shadowy network into which only royals tap, they contacted a witch from the border. Under that witch's touch, one snowy evening, the princess's silver eye cooled to violet, her white hair to black. Her headaches disappeared. 

Days later, the king died, poisoned. There was a reason for this.

The princess once had the true sight—with a squint, and some effort, and a migraine after, she perceived a trustworthy smoke around any thinking creature. Or not, if their intentions were evil. After the witch's visit, she could not sense who among the cook's staff had been blackmailed, or paid off, or whatever it was that pushed them to do such a thing to her father.

She had been cured.

***

The castle, for many years, was quiet with mourning, its halls cold. Even in the spring, the sunlight seemed a facsimile of what it once was.

The king's consort stood as regent until the princess turned fifteen. Then the princess told her what they, her parents, had taken from her. And the consort returned to their barony. 

Perhaps the consort was unable to face their child, who looked more like her father than before, now that she'd been cured.

Perhaps they could not bear what they had done in the name of heirs and bloodlines.

Perhaps they had a political reason.

It is hard to know. 

From history, however, this much is clear: the princess took to her books as a mage or scholar might. No, she wouldn't gain her true sight back, but (much like the cold sunlight in the castle) she could perhaps find a facsimile of it...

She did, of course. In books of politics and war, she did.

The princess—then the queen—became adored and hated both for her great discretion.

She trusted the botanist, a refugee from another land.

She trusted her chief guard, once a petty soldier.

She trusted a dragon. A tulip-farmer. 

Reader, she would very likely trust you, too.

But...

And this she thought of each day, brushing her hair herself, for the touch of another on her scalp made her wince—

She would not trust those who sought to change their children.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment or a kudos or whatever the heck if this tickled your fancy. There shall be more! ❤️
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY:** This is definitely the story where the SecStar universe started to coalesce.
> 
> To be clear, the queen really only got an echo of the true sight via studying human psychology later. The ability she has in her adolescence and beyond is not nearly as powerful as what she had as a child.
> 
> Taaron, the witch, appears in later stories as a teen, and is also the witch that took the botanist in (["Unseen, Like The Wind"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22238881)). She's got a whole separate storyline of her own that ties in with our castlefolk.
> 
> Finally...what is the true sight? I don't want to give it all away right now. But it's not witchcraft, and it doesn't tie into the spirits that ritualists use. And how does it work, really? How does it pick up on "good" and "evil"? I can tell you that it's very subjective. Two people with true sight may see different auras on the same person. Weird, right?


End file.
